Portland played poorly. The defense looked lackluster as Chivas put a goal on the board in the 16th minute, and the offense did very little to respond.

But as the Timbers were dimly grasping their way toward an eventual eighth-place finish in the Western Conference, the franchise already was forming a new vision behind the scenes.

“During the middle of last year we started to question the direction of the club,” said Timbers general manager Gavin Wilkinson. “We started to talk about what steps we needed to take to not make the same mistakes moving forward.”

The first step was bringing in a new coach with a new approach. The Timbers interviewed some very experienced candidates – knowing that would be the safest option – but felt those coaches would only be short-term solutions for the club. In Porter, Wilkinson and Timbers owner Merritt Paulson saw a young and motivated coach who shared their vision and could successfully be at the helm for years to come.

“Caleb came in and tipped us over the edge,” Wilkinson said. “We developed a road map. We had a clearer idea of who we wanted to be and how we wanted to play.”

A year later, the Timbers have undergone a remarkable transformation.

At this time last year, the Timbers were imploding and already had played their way out of a shot at the playoffs. They finished the season with 16 losses. This season, Portland (12-5-14, 50 points) is on the cusp of clinching its first-ever MLS playoff berth and has recorded far and away the fewest losses in MLS with five. And the Timbers' 50 points are 16 points better than their 2012 total.

Portland has a goal differential (goals scored minus goals conceded) of plus-15 this year, tied for best in the league with Real Salt Lake and Sporting Kansas City. The squad’s goal differential improvement from last season of plus-37 ranks fourth best in MLS history.

The Timbers finished 3-8-6 under Wilkinson and, as the season went from bad to worse, fans took to Twitter to vent their dissatisfaction. The hashtag #GWOUT gained traction and Paulson took to the social media site to defend Wilkinson, calling some fans “idiotic” and “moronic.”

Still, the organization was poised to make some changes.

The Timbers brought Porter to a match in Portland and then another in Seattle. Wilkinson flew out to the University of Akron to meet with the coach, who had turned Akron into a powerhouse and led the squad to a national championship.

The Timbers had realized that their vision of a young attack-minded team had been too simplistic, Wilkinson said. They liked Porter’s possession-oriented approach and analytical style.

“The more time we spent with him it just became clear,” Wilkinson said. “We liked his style, his ideas on how the game should be played and his vision for where he would like to take this team.”

With Porter in place, the Timbers began methodically transforming their roster. Porter laid out a lengthy performance plan for the team that included detailed positional profiles for each spot on the field — from the tactical and technical to the physical and psychological characteristics the team wanted players at each position to possess.

This time around, the Timbers weren’t leaving anything to chance.

On a scouting trip to Argentina last year, Wilkinson noticed current Timbers forward Max Urruti playing for the Argentine club Newell's Old Boys. After Wilkinson told Porter about the young forward, the coach and his staff watched Urruti on video nearly a dozen times to determine how the forward could fit into the Timbers' system. When the opportunity to acquire the striker from Toronto presented itself in September, the Timbers already had fully scouted him.

“We are more stringent in what we do now in bringing a player into this team,” Wilkinson said. “Maybe in the past it wasn’t given as much importance, and I’ll take the blame for that.”

This season, the hashtag #GWOUT has all but disappeared from Twitter as the Timbers have evolved into one of the elite teams in MLS. Porter’s influence on the transformation is undeniable. But he credits his relationship and open lines of communication with Wilkinson for the Timbers’ ability to bring in the right mix of players who fit into the team’s new well-defined vision and master plan.

“I think he’s one of the best GMs in the league,” Porter said. “We work well together and we trust each other and we’re in it together. In the end, if he goes down, I go down and vice versa.”

Toward the end of last year, Wilkinson started working with Porter to shape the Timbers' roster. The changes included bringing in a bigger and more experienced goalkeeper in Donovan Ricketts and acquiring an experienced holding midfielder in Will Johnson. Last November, Wilkinson traveled to Argentina to scout Diego Valeri, a player the Timbers believed could fit in perfectly as their playmaker.

“We had a strong belief in the direction we wanted to go,” Wilkinson said, “and a strong belief in the process.”

The Timbers also decided to cut ties with their disappointing, highly paid designated player, Kris Boyd, and didn’t make an effort to replace him with another superstar. Instead, they carefully followed the positional profiles that they had laid out, going after individuals who could play specific roles in the collective squad.

“Caleb’s brought in the guys he’s wanted to bring in and he’s told them specifically what he expects out of each of them,” said Timbers midfielder Darlington Nagbe, who has been with the Timbers since their inaugural 2011 MLS season and played under Porter at Akron. “It’s not just one player. It’s the whole team, and I feel like it’s paid off.”

In all, 17 players on the Timbers' active roster are new this season. Only six players who started in Portland’s final game of 2012 are still on the roster.

“We have to be a little more analytical, cerebral, and we have to just look for pieces that fit the overall picture,” Porter said. “We can’t just go and find the best players and then throw them in and figure out how we’re going to play.”

With the personnel changes has come a new refuse-to-lose mentality. The Timbers rode a 15-game unbeaten streak through the first half of the season and currently have a 13-game unbeaten streak at home. And when Portland settled for a draw at last-place Chivas in September, the team was severely disappointed.

“Everyone has a very specific job to do,” Timbers captain Will Johnson said. “We work on that throughout the week in training and then it carries over to the games … that’s the recipe for success.”

The Timbers are currently in third place in the Western Conference, only two points behind first-place Real Salt Lake and three points shy of New York in the race for the Supporters’ Shield, awarded to the team with the best record. And they could clinch their first-ever MLS playoff berth as early as this weekend.

Last year seems like a distant memory.

Still, Porter, Wilkinson and Paulson are in constant contact each day. And in the middle of each week, they pick a new restaurant and meet away from the field to talk about the club. There’s always room to grow.

“We’re on the right track,” Porter said. “But we’re not there yet, and I’m not satisfied and neither are these players because once you get to a point where you achieve things, you want more.”